Saturday, June 16, 2007

Chinese Bird Dinosaur-Lauren

I found this article in the Science section of the New York Times. A fossil has been discovered in Inner Mongolia (northern China) that seems to have been a 25 foot long, 3000 pound birdlike dinosaur. This fossil is surprising because the widely held theory is that dinosaurs became smaller as they became more birdlike, and this fossil contradicts that. Researchers think it is a completely different genus and species from all other known dinosaur species, giving it the name Gigantoraptor erlianensis. It shows how little we really know about dinosaur diversity.